"With low or no fees, undergraduates felt freer to pursue their own dreams of being taught by the kinds of leading scholars and world-renowned artists found in an institution like my own. They could afford to take the time to find their own feet, to chop and change courses and module options. Many would tell me they had discovered for the first time the wonders of anthropology, not having had any idea of the field previously."
So lovely that a colleague from a different
.. discipline talks about the "wonders of anthropology". It really is a wonderful field! Adding here aš§µ on 8 reasons why the world needs #Anthropology. But really what I should have said: the world needs non-elite anthropologists and non-elite institutions teaching anthropology. It can't just be for the privileged at Oxbridge; it needs to be what we do at Goldsmiths - by and for everyone, especially those normally marginalised.
My discipline, anthropology, is not seen as a āgrowth" discipline, and departments are being closed down. But the world needs Anthropology and Anthropologists now more than ever! Here are my 8 reasons for this: 1. POSSIBILITIES At a time of polycrisis, when the destructive fallouts of capitalist modernity are ever more apparent, anthropology highlights that there are myriad alternative ways of thinking and living; that there is so much to learn from other peoples in the world. 1/n
#AcademicVenting Ok so this piece by Glen OāHara really is venting.
I am conscious that I & others might come across as incredible whiners. And of course I am aware that we are, for now (50% chance of unemployment for me in 3 months) incredibly privileged. But what OāHara describes here is completely accurate. In addition to so much other awfulness in the world, the reality of academic life creates its own unhappiness - linked to ideals of what we feel it should be.
āThe modern university has become a site of moral harm or injury, perhaps mildly so, but a hard place to work and keep oneās sense of purpose and morality intact. Universities have moved progressively out of line with their staffās view of the world, and that gap is another element in the increasing difficulty of keeping a grip on reality.ā
#AcademicVenting Yes this too happened. All just borrowing from each other, or the same SMT people moving from uni to uni, wreaking havoc everywhere they go, with every step enhancing their own careers
#AcademicVenting Was a bit hard at first to read - at Goldsmiths we tend to think of UCL as the āHooverā, sucking up all students, and indeed cohorts of 300+ history students make you weep! - but of course awful for staff being made redundant there, too, and for students having fewer and fewer module choices, vast classes, etc etc.
Universities ARE staff & students, yet management cares about neither. This is what marketisation does.
āThe redundancies show that UCL cares not for their studentsā role as a āconsumerā. With the marketisation of higher education, something that has been critical in making universities neoliberal hellscapes, the student has been poised as a customer, rather than a learner. University is now meant to be a means to a greater end, with that end solely being employment.ā
#AcademicVenting I think i said āneoliberal shitshowā at one point somewhere above, but āneoliberal hellscapeā excellent too.
Pondering now how UK neoliberalism really is always simultaneously shitshow and hellscape. Shitty hellscape or hellish shitshow maybe. HE, water companies, NHS, the lovely Tory government itself- everywhere the same combination of cruelty, ineptitude and, of course, MONEY thinking.
#AcademicVenting That is what this is: we are governed by money itself, and it brings cruel unimaginative rightwing mediocrity to the top everywhere. (Second crossover with #FollowTheMoney š§µ here!)
Sadly forgotten name just now, (will edit), but remembering podcast with Cambridge prof saying people worry about being ruled by AI , nonhuman entities, but that is exactly what corporations are. Nonhuman entities are already running everything.
Attached: 1 image #Budget #UKPolitics This article by Gary Stevenson is so good, please read every word of it. āWhatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And theyāre paid millions to bet on it.ā This is what the world is - it is run by a minute elite for a minute elite and the rest of us, the masses, the natural world, we just donāt count. It is a #TragedyOftheNonCommons (will reshare my own piece on this below 1/n) #FollowTheMoney https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/05/banker-budget-mega-rich-traders-jeremy-hunt?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
#AcademicVenting š§µ. Different theme but all related anyway: Dr Abu-Sittahās truly brilliant inauguration speech at Glasgow. Highlighting the moral role that universities play, but also their complicity. He and Glasgow now provide important moral backbone, but all this has withered through neoliberal marketisation in English universities (see Glen OāHara above). Mostly just shamefully neutral, bland statements on āmiddleeast crisisā.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/dr-ghassan-abu-sittah-tomorrow-is-a-palestinian-day/
#AcademicVenting š§µ. Just realised I hadnāt added here yet Zoe Williamās excellently researched piece about our crisis at Goldsmiths. Really great we have had so many people speaking out for us. Loved this piece in particular as itās also about the student occupation about #Gaza, and it cites a brilliant student who I have had the pleasure of teaching, Danna.
Best perhaps the final sentence: āBut I donāt think ita done dealā.
Arts education is essential ā yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine?
#AcademicVenting The vice chancellor of York (a Russell group university!), Charlie Jeffery:
āThere is no other way of saying this. The UK higher education system is in crisis. The way it is funded just doesnāt work anymore. A rough guess is that about half of the sector is responding by cutting jobs and coursesā.
#AcademicVenting š§µ another really excellent piece on the UK higher education crisis, by Hannah Rose Woods in The New Statesmanā:
Experts believe it is already ātoo lateā to avert the oncoming funding disaster: āall everyone can do now is braceā.
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/04/university-funding-is-in-crisis
āWith wearying inevitability, cuts will be borne disproportionately by arts, humanities & social sciences. Some will doubtlessly cheer the trimming of supposedly ālow-valueā subject areas. They may be less enthusiastic about the knock-on effect their demise would have on more expensive to teach science and technology subjects, or the wider impact of rapid restructuring in a sector that supports more than three quarters of a million jobs and contributes Ā£130bn to the economy.ā
#AcademicVenting š§µ
One reason why itās all falling apart this year are changes in visa regulations for international students - Tory gov trying to curb immigration - who are no longer allowed to bring dependents.
Hey James Cleverley and Michelle Donelan - stop denying and ignoring this MASSIVE crisis that you are causing! You are destroying a vital sector with your stupid short-sighted policies. You will lose anyway- stop wreaking havock now! (I know this is šÆ pointless)
#AcademicVenting Finally read Jonathan Miller's #DeathSpiral piece, and I wish all SMTs across the country getting rid of all their PRODUCTIVE lecturers (ie, the people actually making money for universities, through student fees and research income) would read it, too. They genuinely don't understand what they are doing!
Please, understand the British Leyland's 1970s coat [*EDIT: this should be cost! I copied a typo! See @rubinjoni
below!* š
] allocation death spiral
#AcademicVenting Couldnāt have put it any better. Not just the redundancy process; just so sick of all it, what it has become. #Neoliberalism #university
āI am sick of higher education leaders, I am sick of neoliberal thinking, I am sick of scarcity mindsets, I am sick of austerity, I am sick of senior management lacking morals, I am sick of education being decimated, I donāt know how we hang on + do important work for studentsā
#AcademicVenting Good 2021 piece by Asheesh Kapur Siddique linking rightwing university politics - ie, the oppression of #Gaza student protests we are currently seeing - to this š§µās overall theme: the marketisation of HE. Tight establishment control (with all its crappy values) is a direct result of marketisation.
About the US but much of it applicable to UK and Australia too.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/campus-cancel-culture-university-boards
#AcademicVenting š§µ and now this piece by Jessica Wildfire @aral shared earlier today.
āUniversities aren't institutions of knowledge anymore. They're assets. They're revenue streams. If they're not generating money for the top, then they only pose a threat, and they have to be weakened and destroyed.ā
āA lot of rich people donāt actually want an education system or the educated population that would come along with it. Sure, it would be better for everyone. But it would also mean having to share, and these people have let their greed literally drive them insane.ā https://www.okdoomer.io/im-a-professor-heres-why-im-walking-away-from-my-tenure/ 1/2
#AcademicVenting Reading "Tips for Redundancy" compiled by a UCU colleague elsewhere:
"Keep a Diary
Going through a redundancy process is traumatic but you will find that you become hardened and come to expect the mistreatment to which you are being subjected. Keeping a diary of how you felt at points throughout the whole process is a way of tracking how it is impacting upon your life (both work and personal)."
It's true, writing things down helps! But also: you definitely harden up.
#AcademicVenting I had not mentioned so far: Goldsmiths lectures and union are resisting redundancies in many ways, including a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB). Senior Management have responded with highly punitive 50% salary deductions, for 2 months. So we are losing one month pay!!
This too is unbelievably stressful - in fact, is stressing me out more than anything at the moment (unappreciative teenage children for a start). Especially when you might still end up jobless. #UCU.
#AcademicVenting We now have a GoFundMe for our Goldsmiths #UCU hardship fund, due to 50% salary reductions for marking boycott. If you are in HE and in your union, perhaps you could ask your branch whether they could contribute? Feel awkward about saying this but: every donation welcome.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-goldsmiths-ucu-fight-mass-redundancies
#AcademicVenting we are trying to fight draconian redundancies at Goldsmiths at a time when there is a concerted effort by government, the anti-woke brigade and others to reduce the HE sector as a whole. There are more and more articles like this one, talking about how little bits of optimism amount to a collective ācloud cuckoolandā.
There is a real onslaught.
#AcademicVenting this coincides with the UK governmentās calamitous attempt to combat ānet migrationā by reducing the number of international students; they are no longer allowed to bring dependents (neither are care workers. The cruelty!) This is a tweet by our lovely prime minister. We have a government that is actively hostile to HE (one of the economically most important sectors in the country)
#AcademicVenting They tried to go one step further by abolishing the current work visa for international students (allowing int students to stay for 2 years after graduating). Luckily the Migratory Advice Committee firmly pushed back on this last week, and hopefully none of this will come to anything once Tories are out, but itās impacting
International students decision making - we already have offer holders pulling out of our MAs.
#AcademicVenting The crisis in HE (higher education) is so tangible itās making headline news; our dangerous exposure to changes in migration/visa regimes and therefore whims of government ever more apparent.
Who is completely silent on all this (as fas as I know), as on everything else? Starmer, Labour. It would make a massive difference, and would work for them. But no. Everyone beholden to the same - imagined! - anti-woke, anti-immigration, anti-university voter.
#AcademicVenting Anyway, here a nice comment piece by Polly Toynbee
āTories and their pollsters see as clear as day that the growth in highly educated citizens, above the OECD average, is a social and political revolution not in their favour: the more educated people are, the less likely they are to vote for what John Stuart Mill called āthe stupidest partyā.ā
#AcademicVenting if anyone wants to know what Stage 2 of the redundancy process is like:
#HungerGames with mitigation forms.
Today our āIndividual Assessment Formā (IAFs - formerly known as SMQs - āskills management questionnairesā - no idea why the name change but who cares)
are due in. We all have to attach things like student evaluations and progression data as well as publications, grants, etc. Then we will be scored against each other and some of us selected for redundancy. I am in a pool of 4 (with 3 wonderful colleagues) - we are going down to 2.
#AcademicVenting #HungerGames Here is my lovely colleague Michael Rosen at the picket line yesterday, asking:
how will they score āWe Are Going On A Bearhuntā?
#AcademicVenting Did this post separately but want to add to š§µ š
āSelf-care in the age of collapseā This piece, like many others by the very brilliant Jessica Wildfire before, captures so much of what I feel right now, battling in the place i happen to be caught in in the malstroem of the #polycrisis (Goldsmiths meltdown, together with everything else). Itās recognising, as JW says, that āthere are no good optionsā, but having to find strategies somehow. 1/2 #ClimateDiary #AcademicVenting https://www.okdoomer.io/self-care-in-the-age-of-collapse/
#AcademicVenting Well, we all submitted our "Individual Assessment Forms" last Wednesday. Now looks like ALL cuts in my department will be made at my level, Senior Lecturer; 3 out 5 of us are supposed to go.
It is absolutely INSANE how all this is unfolding; the kinds of people who are in charge of all this. We are supposed to hear on Friday who it will be.
#AcademicVenting š§µ
For the (self-pitying) record: we will hear Monday or Tuesday who will be made redundant. āWeā being those of us still in scope; there has been a bewildering reduction of āin scopeā groups this past week, after everyone spent days and days on their IAFs (see above).
I am in scope; all reduncancies in my dep are at SL/Reader grade. 5 of us scored (out of ā90ā) and ranked. Top 2 stay, bottom 2 go, middle gets 0.5. It is psychologically torturous. We are friends! #HungerGames
Well this is it. i am being made redundant.
Pauline von Hellermann
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